Cinema
The Dog Who Loved Trains
Пас који је волео возове
Goran Paskaljević · 1977
Synopsis
Mika, convicted of minor black-marketeering, escapes from the train taking women prisoners to forced labour. She has long dreamed of Paris and wants to go there at all costs. With no money or papers, she accepts help from a former stuntman who roams the provinces in cowboy gear, with three horses and a donkey, putting on rodeos drawn from westerns. A young man who has long been looking for his lost dog becomes attached to her and wants to help her get a false passport.
Context
The screenplay is by Gordan Mihić, who had already co-written Kad budem mrtav i beo ten years earlier. With the director's first feature, the film forms a diptych of melancholy comedies about loneliness. Svetlana Bojković plays Mika, opposite Irfan Mensur and Bata Živojinović as a cowboy. It was selected in competition at the Berlin festival in 1978, and Centar Film handles its distribution today.
Who it is for
An hour and a half in Serbo-Croat with subtitles. Nothing in it requires prior knowledge, except that a passport was then hard to obtain on that side of Europe.
Prizes and reception
Selected for the Golden Bear in 1978, and counted in 2016 among the one hundred Serbian films classified as cultural property.